There is a doll in my collection that looks like it has gone through hell and back. Shaved off hair on the scalp, markers on her face and I can easily point the finger at my brothers. But do you know what has survived a playroom with four young kids? Her clothes! They are pristine and every bit as inspiring now that I am in my 40s as when my mother gifted me with her childhood doll many decades ago.
The quality, style, and beauty of vintage Barbie clothes paves the way for so much inspiration for anyone sewing and designing their own wardrobe. Here I took one of my favorite outfits and created my DIY Barbie look.
DIY Barbie Look: The Dress
Here I thought this would be the easy part of my look, boy was I wrong. It began with a search for a great strapless dress. I took a cue from the master of vintage sewing herself and began searching Gertie’s Sewing Books. I decided to use Gertie’s Ultimate Dress Book. **Links may be affiliate links. I only recommend products I use and love, please see my disclosure policy for more details.**
Sewing the Vintage Barbie Dress
Gertie’s Ultimate Dress Book features a strapless cocktail dress that I used as my pattern. After a muslin to check fit, I got to work sewing the beautiful brocade fabric. This particular brocade is sold out, but there are many other beauties on the Minerva site.
Brocade is notorious for horrible fraying, therefore I took the time to serge every edge prior to construction. I also fully lined this dress in a pink satin so that the brocade would not be itchy on my skin.
Details included in this dress are a back vent, invisible zipper, boning, and a waist stay. The book covers three of those areas in full detail but I have always struggled with the tops of my invisible zippers. During construction, Kenneth D King happened to post this tutorial on his Instagram and ta-dah…my best invisible zipper to date.
Sewing up all those details took some time. In the end, I am so pleased I took this opportunity to make this dress special. I hope to be able to pass it along to my daughter and have it withstand the test of time as well the original Barbie Outfit.
DIY Barbie Look: The Coat
Now that the dress was done, it was time to focus on the coat. After many hours of fruitless searches for patterns, I decided to keep the coat more simple. I was going to omit the collar and use a pattern I already had in my stash. I had made McCalls 7730 once before using the statement sleeves, you can read about that look here.
The lining was taken from a vintage dress gifted to me and ended up being my biggest regret. While it is a perfect color match to the original Barbie look, it required piecing together. The result of all that piecing is some pulling in the jacket that drives me a bit bonkers. After hours of trying to fix it, I decided to wave the white flag and move past the error. As you can see by reading this, I am completely over it and have moved on 🙂 To add insult to injury, the coat ended up losing some length in the whole lining fiasco and is now shorter than the dress. While others may not notice or care, it bothers me since I intended a different look. Again, clearly I am over this….move on Shannon, move on!!
Adding Fur Cuffs
One of the best features of this Barbie Look is the cuffs for me. In order to recreate them, I used the longest sleeve option from McCalls 7730 and drafted my own cuffs. I used this same concept from my Cuff Tutorial but did not make the cuffs smaller than the sleeve as you would with knits. In searching for the right fur, I wanted to use something from my stash. I have been gifted several furs to use as I would like, but I couldn’t bear to cut into these expensive and pristine furs for a refashion. Instead I had a very beat up, ripped and hole filled, pelt from Pendelton sitting in my refashion pile. Although it is lighter in color, it ended up being the perfect use for this fur. I was able to stitch the holes closed and you wouldn’t even know they were there.
Final Thoughts
Overall the Barbie look is pretty much what I had hoped to accomplish. The stunning brocade from Minerva helped make this dream a reality. I now have a fabulous recreated Barbie look that I hope will be able to withstand time as well as the original pieces.
Until Next Time,
Happy Sewing
About 18 years ago I decided to teach myself how to sew. Long before blogs and resources available today which meant it was often disastrous. But I never gave up because I loved it so much. Today I love helping others get started on their own sewing journey. You can read more about my family and I
So where will you be wearing this treasure????
If only I had a wedding to attend or a cruise to go on 🙂 One day, hopefully!